A Primer in Chinese Buddhist Writings

The dominant form of Chinese today is Mandarin. Like all forms of Chinese, Mandarin is tonal: the same sound, pronounced in different tones can mean radically different things. In medieval times, when most of the texts provided below were composed or translated, there were more tones, and the pronunciation differed significantly. This explains in part why medieval transliterations of Sanskrit words (like Fótuó 佛陀 for Buddha) in modern Mandarin pronunciation often do not sound much like their Sanskrit equivalents (the medieval pronunciation of the word was probably much closer to “Buddha”). Linguists, working with rhymed poetry as well as translations of foreign terms, have made various attempts to reconstruct medieval pronunciations of Chinese words.¹ While Mandarin is the official language of the PRC and Taiwan, used in news broadcasts and political speeches, many other forms of Chinese are also in use. For the most part, these share grammar and vocabulary with Mandarin. Some, probably owing to geographic isolation, have changed less rapidly over time than others and preserve more ancient pronunciations. For this reason, Cantonese (spoken in Canton [Guangdong] and Hong Kong) and Minnan (spoken in southern Fujian and Taiwan) are probably closer to the way Chinese was spoken in the capital in the Tang dynasty than Mandarin is.

Nonetheless, for the purposes of this course, I gloss all terms according to Mandarin pronunciation, the basis for most modern dictionaries of Chinese. Various systems have been used to “romanize” Chinese (represent Chinese with Roman letters). The dominant system today is pīnyīn, a system developed in the PRC. Proper pronunciation of Mandarin is best learned with recordings and a native speaker (much of the first year of a modern Chinese course is spent mastering tones). Absent a teacher, your best option is to learn from an introduction to pinyin with recordings (e.g. http://www.ctcfl.ox.ac.uk/pinyin_notes.htm). Online videos with native speakers are also useful.

Notes

1. See for instance Edwin G. Pulleyblank, Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese and Early Mandarin (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1991). The historical phonology of Chinese is a hotly contested field; there is as yet no firm consensus on how Chinese sounded in medieval times.